1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the barrier rib structure of a plasma display panel and a manufacturing method thereof, and more particularly, to a barrier rib structure and manufacturing method capable of improving illumination efficiency and gas exhaust of a plasma display panel.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Plasma display panels (PDPs) have been gradually applied to large sized displaying apparatuses. The light source comes from plasma, which is initiated by electrodes, to produce ultraviolet rays. When the ultraviolet rays excite different fluorescent materials, the fluorescent materials will emit visible light having different wavelengths. In general, the PDPs have advantages of thin and lightweight design, large display size, and wide viewing angle over the cathode ray tubes (CRTs) that have been mainly employed as display devices. Therefore, PDPs are currently very popular.
In general, the barrier rib structure of conventional PDPs is stripe structure. Nevertheless, the stripe structure often causes address electrodes to result in a global breakdown, and due to smaller area capable of applying a fluorescent layer, the overall brightness of the PDPs is greatly reduced. In order to prevent the global breakdown and increase the brightness of PDPs, a closed type barrier rib structure has been developed by the industry.
Please refer to FIG. 1. FIG. 1 is a schematic diagram of a closed type barrier rib structure 12 of a PDP according to the prior art. As shown in FIG. 1, a closed type barrier rib structure 12 includes a plurality of parallel arranged vertical barrier ribs 14 and a plurality of parallel arranged horizontal barrier ribs 16, in which the vertical barrier ribs 14 and the horizontal barrier ribs 14 are disposed on the upper surface of a bottom substrate 10 to form a plurality of discharge spaces 18, e.g., discharge cells. Additionally, a plurality of address electrodes 20 are arranged in parallel with each other and disposed underneath the closed type barrier ribs structure 12, such that the address electrodes 20 are utilized to perform address discharges at the location where the address electrodes 20 cross over the sustain electrodes (not shown in FIG. 1). Moreover, the bottom substrate 10 also includes a dielectric layer 24 formed on top of the bottom substrate 10 and the address electrodes 20.
Nevertheless, after the bottom substrate 10 is tightly bound to an upper substrate (not shown), the gas trapped between the substrates is only able to circulate within the small gap (approximately 5 microns) between the upper substrate and the closed barrier rib structure 12. Consequently, performing a exhausting process on the discharge space 18 formed by the vertical barrier ribs 14 and the horizontal barrier ribs 16 will be much more difficult and will result in problems such as reduction of the speed of gas exhaust and incomplete exhaust. Moreover, the sealing process of inert gases will also become difficult and will ultimately affect the purity of the gas and reduce the life expectancy of the PDPs.